Chris Evans Says Lessons Were Learned After "Embarrassing" NSFW Leak.
After getting the internet's attention over the weekend by accidentally leaking a photo of a penis on his Instagram Story, the actor addressed the situation on Tamron Hall's daytime show.
Unless you were living on a remote island without access to the internet this weekend, you likely heard about the Marvel star's NSFW social media mishap. As the story goes, the actor shared a screen recording of his family playing Head's Up to his Instagram Story. However, the footage also included the video ending on the actor's phone and returning back to his camera roll, which included a photo of a penis. Naturally, eagle-eyed fans did not miss the brief moment and, though Evans eventually deleted the post, it was too late as social media erupted over the racy snap.
On Monday, Sept. 14, Evans finally addressed the viral moment, tweeting, "Now that I have your attention...VOTE Nov 3rd!!!" Of course, Tamron Hall had to bring it up while Evans was a remote guest on her show Tuesday, Sept. 15. The host credited him for encouraging fans to vote and using the awkward leak to "get our eyes on something more important." Evans cleverly responded, "That's called turning a frown upside down, Tamron."
The actor further addressed the situation, telling Hall "it was an interesting weekend full of, uh, lessons learned." "Lots of teachable moments," he added. "You know, things happen. It's embarrassing. You gotta roll with the punches."
The blockbuster star also gave a shoutout to his fans, who have come to his defense and tried to shift the public conversation with photos of the star with his dog.
"I will say I have some pretty fantastic fans who really came to my support," he told Hall. "That was really, really nice."
Some of Evans' famous colleagues also publicly weighed in on the matter. His Knives Out co-star Jamie Lee Curtis reshaped the actor's tweet about voting. "My boy!" she wrote. "Proud of him. Got MY attention!" Meanwhile, Mark Ruffalo tried to comfort the star. "Bro, while Trump is in office there is NOTHING you could possibly do to embarrass yourself," he tweeted to Evans. "See... silver lining."
As recently as a decade ago, we didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for stars going through risqué photo or sex tape scandals. If they were dumb enough to take the photos or videos in the first place, the thinking went, they didn’t deserve our compassion. Recent events prove that times have changed: This weekend, Captain America accidentally posted a dick pic, and sure, there was some snickering good clean fun. But Evans apparently didn’t realize that when the clip of the game ended, his photo roll popped up on screen, and there on his grid was a dick pic, presumably his own. (Also notable among the images in the photo roll: a meme featuring Evans’ own face and the line “GUARD. THAT. PUSSY.”) Evans quickly took down the post, but not soon enough to stop some users from capturing it and sharing elsewhere.
The reaction might have gone another way, but Evans was buoyed by early support from fellow stars like Chrissy Teigen, who raised the good point that she has many boobs on her phone that don’t belong to her, and Mark Ruffalo, who tried to show his bro the silver lining (that nothing could be more embarrassing than the U.S. president). At the same time, fans were organizing, urging other users to respect Evans’ privacy by not further disseminating the photos. Some of these concerned fans pointed out that Evans has struggled with anxiety. These Evans supporters seemed to have learned a thing or two from the tactics K-pop fans successfully deployed earlier this year toward sabotaging a Trump rally and police efforts to surveil Black Lives Matters protesters: They used their collective power to flood Chris Evans’ hashtag on Twitter with photos of the actor and puppies so that those images would appear before the dreaded screenshots in search results. In a twist, the story of an A-list actor’s leaked dick pic seemed, on the whole, pretty wholesome.
But soon, the fallout entered a second, perhaps inevitable phase: The notion that this would have gone much differently if Chris Evans were a woman of similar stature began to bubble up. The actress Kat Dennings said as much in a tweet:
The Independent offered similar thoughts in a piece headlined “Chris Evans’ Nude Picture Leak Would Have Happened Very Differently if He Was a Woman”: The article asserted that “women actors like Jennifer Lawrence whose nude pictures were leaked without their consent were blamed relentlessly and cruelly,” referring to an infamous 2014 photo hack. Reddit’s front page featured a post by a user who said he or she was “proud of the internet” for its reaction to Evans’ pic, but the post also noted a possible double standard:
[T]his reminded me of when female celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence got their icloud account hacked … How people blamed HER for taking nudes of HERSELF on HER own phone, and how she should expect to get hacked because she’s a celebrity. I’m hoping that the change in reaction between the two celebrities is because we, as a society, are learning and doing better, and not because of double standards, but I really can’t tell, and don’t want to see another celebrity nude leak from any gender happen to find out.
There’s no disputing that men and women in the public eye are treated very differently, but it’s an oversimplification to say that Lawrence was “blamed relentlessly and cruelly” when her photos were hacked and that Evans was spared. Lawrence garnered a great deal of support at the time, including a very sympathetic Vanity Fair cover story and widespread online outrage. She faced shrugs and finger-wagging from a predictable class of internet misogynists (and, uh, Clay Aiken), but it was hardly the overall tenor of the reaction. Her career didn’t suffer in any obvious way. Evans, having accidentally leaked his own photo, isn’t a victim in the same way Lawrence and other celebrities whose photos were stolen are. But the most powerful and mainstream reactions to these two incidents are actually more alike than not.
Over the past 10 years, stars have gone from being shamed when private photos or videos get out to be treated as victims of a crime (some of Lawrence’s perpetrators went to prison), or in Evans’ case, as victims of unscrupulous actors who spread the photos online. At the same time, the act of taking nudes has basically become normalized. Put simply, they are less of a big deal, and the act of consuming them without permission has become guilty and shameful, even if some guys on Reddit try to justify it by saying the people in them had it coming.
That we’re at a point where a sizable group of people understands that passing around an accidentally shared dick pic is a violation of consent is a #MeToo victory. But there are also X-factors at work here. Fans and the internet don’t always deserve full credit for an enlightened stance. In fact, as much as Evans deserves the benefit of the doubt in this situation, his fans might be just as likely to jump to his defense if he didn’t. Not definitely but for every “heartwarming” interaction between a star and their fans, there’s a counterexample of a famous person siccing their fans on an unsuspecting critic or fast food Twitter account that has supposedly wronged them. It felt particularly absurd for fans to suggest that people should stop circulating Evans’ picture on social media because Evans has struggled with anxiety—as opposed to all the other celebrities who haven’t been diagnosed with any disorders, whose pictures would be fair game for gawking at? Stars who don’t have as many or as powerful a legion of stans deserve some privacy and decency too. If Ben Affleck were to have some dick pics leak tomorrow, I suspect it would be a different story. But maybe Affleck will get slippery fingers and the internet will prove me wrong.
Chris Evans Accidentally Posted a Nude Pic
Chris Evans Accidentally Posted a Nude Pic and Twitter Is Going Wild. Chris Evans seemingly posted and deleted a nude photo of himself on his Instagram Story. Twitter is freaking out about the NSFW photo.
Nothing to see here, folks. Despite playing Captain America on the big screen, in real life, Chris Evans is a mere mortal. So, it's easy to understand his little social media mishap that has Twitter freaking out. Chris seemingly posted a screenshot of his camera roll on his Instagram Stories with a photo that looks like, um, a dick pic.
After sharing a screen recording of his family playing Heads Up, his camera roll displayed on the screen when the video ended and showed the black and white photo in question. Even though Chris hasn't addressed the mishap, he did delete it ASAP which looks hella suspicious. Of course, the accident began trending and even his Avengers costar had something to say about it.
"@ChrisEvans Bro, while Trump is in office there is NOTHING you could possibly do to embarrass yourself. See... silver lining," Mark Ruffalo tweeted.
But, that's not all. There was another eyebrow-raising image in the screen recording. A photo of Chris with the words "Guard that Pussy" written on it was also in his camera roll. Uh, I don't really know what to make of that one, tbh. Since the post, his fans have taken to Twitter to express their reactions.
Some are coming to Chris' defense, asking for people to respect his privacy.
The cool part about this potentially embarrassing mistake is how his fans are posting positive and wholesome photos of him to Twitter in an attempt to drown out the screenshots of the photo.
